


pick me up

by poeticnuisance



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 12:05:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16197185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticnuisance/pseuds/poeticnuisance
Summary: Aedion likes pickup lines and lizards. Lysandra doesn’t like Clarisse or lizards. Human college au.“If you were a chicken, you’d be impeccable,”





	pick me up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [@starsofshadowsanddust on tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=%40starsofshadowsanddust+on+tumblr).



Lysandra plastered a smile on her face and excused herself. “I’m so sorry, I have to the bathroom.” 

As she turned away from the sticky, sweaty booth, the smile dropped and she walked as fast as her 6-inch heels would allow her to walk to the ladies room. Swinging open the door, she sighed heavily and scanned the room. It was empty. She planted her hands on either side of the basin and looked into her eyes in the mirror.

They were laden with eye-makeup, and beneath the paint her eyes were bloodshot and tired. Not that anyone would ever care to look past the precise eyeliner and fluttering eyelashes.

Lysandra spat into the basin as she thought about how tonight was going to end. It was inevitable - she knew it, the guy knew it, Arobynn had arranged it and Clarisse had trained her for it. She had no idea why the guy had arranged a date before, it just made everything awkward. Especially a date in this run down bar. Regular patrons called it The Vaults, and Lysandra got the feeling that she didn’t want to know why. She remembered their stilted conversations and grimaced. It was better when it was just one night, no talking, no pretence of a normal relationship.

That was the downside of being a ‘lady of the night’.

Rowdy talking erupted outside the bathroom and the door slammed open, revealing a group of very drunk boys carrying their even-drunker blond friend on their shoulders. A silver-haired boy at the back stopped at the sight of her, glanced at the sign on the door and groaned. His friends continued walking, laughing, towards a bathroom stall, where they threw down the blond kid and giggled as he threw up. Loudly.

The tall one still by the door shrugged apologetically and approached the stall.

“Come on girls, this is the ladies.”

One of them turned around, staggering forward into silver guy.

“And how would you know that, Ro. Rowie, Rowan.” He snorted, leaning against the wall and brushing his hair off his shoulders as he noticed Lysandra still staring at them from the sink. “Oh. That’s how.”

Rowan followed his gaze to Lysandra and mouthed “I’m sorry,” to her.

His friend began to walk towards her, obviously swaying but attempting to look cool. The noise of retching from the toilet stall set a great mood.

The boy got so close to Lysandra that she took a few steps back. The smell of alcohol was really strong from this distance.

“So, pretty lady, you come here often?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Lysandra almost laughed. Almost.

“More often that you, I’ll bet.” She replied drily.

His smile grew wider, as he pitched forward and then steadied himself. “Wanna swap names? Mine’s Aedion.”

Lysandra felt boxed in. Her back was pressed to the sink and the drunk boy was getting closer with every word. She didn’t think he was doing it on purpose, but the alcohol on his breath would be enough to remove anyone’s common sense.

Thankfully, Rowan noticed the fear in her eyes and the way her hands began to shake. He gripped Aedion’s shoulder and pulled him back, whispering something to him.

He turned back to her, a small smirk still on his face.

“See you ‘round, lady.”

Lysandra steeled herself before pushing open the door and sitting down with her date again, but she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Aedion. She smiled despite the guy across from her, who was paying the bill and readying himself for what came next. Aedion.

******

She next saw him a month later, after her best friend Aelin had hooked up with Rowan and she was third-wheeling with them in the library. The official reason they were there was for ‘studying’, as their exams were fast approaching and Lysandra couldn’t afford to fail - not with the future that awaited her if she did.

But she was having a hard time getting any of that done with the heated eye-contact going on between the couple across from her. It was like they were having a conversation with purely eyebrow movement. She rolled her eyes and stood up, announcing that she was going across the library to print something.

She didn’t expect a response, and she didn’t get one. Stalking off, she called over her shoulder, way too loud for a library,

“Keep it in your pants while I’m gone, kay?”

A non-committal grunt from Rowan and a giggle from Aelin, and then they were out of earshot.

As she approached the long line for the printer, someone crashed into her and she fell on her arse. Growling, Lysandra looked up at the perpetrator, and was surprised to recognise the tanned face that grinned down at her, offering a hand to help her up. No recognition flashed in his eyes, but then, when they first met he was black out drunk.

Aedion.

She took his hand and he heaved her up with barely an effort. He was silent for a few seconds as she glared at him, then glared at her books which were scattered around them on the floor. She was shocked back to reality by his voice.

“How very clichéd of us.” He shook his head jokingly, gesturing to the fluttering paper on the ground.

Confused but also distracted by the muscles peeking out from the sleeves of his ‘Rifthold College’ jersey, Lysandra asked

“Cliched?”

He nodded as if it was obvious. “Clichéd. You know, the girl bumps into the guy, she drops her books, he helps her to pick them up and they look up into each other’s eyes and bam.”

She laughed. “Not to ask another question but… Bam?”

Smirking, he said it again. “Bam. Bam and they’re in love.”

She groaned to cover up another laugh that rose from her throat. “Well, I don’t see you helping me to pick these up, do I?”

Aedion got down on his knees and stacked her books up in his arms, handing them to her with a wink. His hand brushed hers and she took a step back, the contact bringing her back down to earth and her stomach knotted into the familiar feeling of dread. She closed her eyes, breathed out and told herself sternly that Aedion wasn’t her client, he wasn’t here for that.

He seemed to notice her discomfort and immediately jumped up, apologising.

“Oh, I’m sorry if I made this weird, I just kind of -” He stopped, ran his hand through his hair. The simple movement distracted Lysandra from her internal crisis, and she watched and his golden locks swung back into place.

“My friends say that I flirt with everything that moves, and I guess I just proved it. Sorry for making this uncomfortable, sorry for crashing into you… I mean, what a way to meet someone for the first time, yeah?”

Lysandra shook her head and clamped her lips over the part of her that desperately wanted to inform him of the actual first time they had met. Instead, she smiled.

“It’s fine, Aedion. And cute pick up line, I’ll have to try that next time I bulldoze someone over.“

They both laughed, breaking the tension that had been building up. Aedion steadied the shaking pile of books she held and winked.

"If you ever need any flirting advice, I’m your guy. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me, actually. They call me the wolf, party king, warrior of the north, you know.”

Lysandra shrugged. “Who’s to say I haven’t heard of you?”

She had. Of course she had, anyone attending Rifthold knew his reputation, and the other names he had. There was one he hadn’t listed, though, that Lysandra refrained from mentioning because she knew how cutting it was.

They called him Adarlan’s Whore.

And as Aedion made some remark about her eyes and waved goodbye, promising to ‘catch her later, alligator,“ she stared after him, wondering if maybe someone like her and someone like him had more in common than you would have guessed.

*****

Why hadn’t he just given her his number? Or asked her out? Or done something other than stand there like an idiot and make things uncomfortable. Aedion paced his room in frustration, to both him and the silver-haired guy he shared it with.

Rowan groaned for the fifth time, leapt out of his chair and stopped the other boy with two firm hands on his shoulders.

"What is it? Spit it out already you idiot.”

Aedion rolled his eyes and wrested out of Rowan’s grip.

“I’ve asked practically everyone on campus about her, but everyone seems to think I’m taking about someone else. It’s like she’s a shapeshifter or something!”

Rowan sat down again, sighing. “Or, she’s just not a very social person. Who the hell are you taking about anyway, A. I could ask Aelin when I meet up with her in,” he sarcastically checked his non-existent watch, “ten minutes ago. I’m late for a date with your cousin and it had better be for a good reason because she will literally set me on fire.”

Aedion snarled, facing Rowan again.

“This girl I met in the library, or rather crashed into. She was so cool and beautiful and normally I’m so slick but I was so thrown off I didn’t even ask her name.” He stopped. “But she knew my name. Why did she know my name?”

Rowan grinned. “I don’t know man, you happen to have a habit of just randomly handing your name out to girls. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was one of them.” He stood up, ran his hands through his newly short hair and walked to the door. “Black hair and green eyes, you say? I’ll ask Aelin.”

Aedion gave a half-hearted wave and resumed his fretting and pacing.

Outside the door, Rowan put two and two together, remember the stunning girl in the bathroom at The Vaults and sped down the stairs to his furious girlfriend.

*****

Aelin had positively cackled when she heard, had immediately told Lysandra and, long story short, now she was sitting in a restaurant that was decidedly nicer than The Vaults and waiting for Aedion to hopefully show. It had taken so much for her to convince Clarisse to let her come, and if he didn’t come she would find him herself and cut off all his pretty hair.

Luckily for his hair, as soon as that thought crossed his mind Aedion appeared in the doorway. He found Lysandra and sat down across from her.

“So, unbelievably, I still don’t have the name of the girl who has been on my mind since the library. Care to help a guy out?”

Lysandra pursed her lips and thought about it. “Lysandra. My name is Lysandra, but you can call me Lys, babe or the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. Your pick.”

Aedion narrowed his eyes, realising that Lysandra had started a smooth war that she was about to lose.

Over dinner, Lysandra laughed at him while telling the bathroom story, greatly exaggerating his drunkenness, and Aedion managed to drop at least a couple of hundred pickup lines that were so cheesy they rivalled the margarita pizza he ordered.

Lysandra, if turned out, could hold her own at flirting and did her fair share of winking and strategically leaning over the table to give him a better view.

Once the first few bites of food were finished, though, the flirting died down a bit and they began to talk. About college, about friends and not-friends, about jobs and family. Lysandra clammed up a bit when Aedion asked her what she did for a living, embarrassed and ashamed. So she turned the question around and asked him something.

“What’s your favourite colour?”

Aedion looked surprised. “My favourite colour?”

“Yeah, what part of that sentence didn’t you understand?” Lysandra jabbed at him with her fork.

“Answer the question.”

He smiled, looked straight into her eyes and whispered

“Green.”

She laughed, and whacked his arm lightly but he just shook his head

“No really, it’s green. It’s the colour of everything there is to love. Nature, turtles, my home country, my pet lizards and zombies.” He grinned. “Oh, and of course your beautiful, lovely eyes.”

Lysandra dropped her voice to a serious tone.

“Aedion.”

“Yeah?”

“You like lizards?”

“Yeah.”

“I just remembered that I had to be somewhere.”

Aedion gasped. “Seriously? You don’t like lizards?”

Lysandra shook her head. “Have you seen one? They are spiky and they shed their skin. How suspicious is that? It would be like humans getting new fingerprints once a month. Do you know the amount of crime that would be possible then?”

Laughing, Aedion seized the opening for something smooth.

“Well, I’ll guess I’ll have to change your mind then. It’s time for you to meet some of the most gentlemanly lizards I know.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Oh really?”

“Tonight, my house, around…” He checked his watch, which read 9:30. “Around 9:30. What do you say?”

Lysandra smiled. “I say why not.”

*****

After the lizard meet and greet, which resulted in a lot of shrieking on Lysandra’s part and a lot of laughing on Aedion’s part, the two somehow ended up on the couch with a terrible movie on and not much space between them.

The movie was about halfway done when Lysandra’s phone went off. She pulled it out, grimaced and excused herself, walking out onto the small veranda.

It was Clarisse.

After a brief conversation on the phone which was less a conversation and more shouting on one end and meek agreement on the other, the phone line went dead. Lysandra leant over the balcony and let the tears rolling down her face drip off the building and down, down to where she couldn’t see them anymore.

A few minutes later, the door slid open slowly and quietly. Aedion tentatively approached her and slipped his jacket over her shoulders.

“You’ll freeze, Lys.”

She turned around, sniffing and making a painfully obvious attempt to hide the tears. “No terrible pickup line? No cheesy compliment? Where did Aedion go?”

Concerned about Lysandra but not wanting to push, Aedion tacked his brain for something that he hadn’t already said.

“How about this: hey baby, wanna cluck? Because if you were a chicken, you’d be impeccable!”

Lysandra groaned, although her dramatic reaction was ruined by the hiccup that broke it.

Aedion grabbed her hand and dragged her inside back into the warm couch.

“I know it’s not my place or anything, but are you okay? Really. I’m a good listener?” Aedion looked into her eyes, wishing there was something he could do to make her feel better.

She shook her head. “I don’t really want to talk about it, not right now. But, if it’s okay,” Lysandra paused and looked away, red staining her already frost bitten cheeks. “Can I stay here?”

Aedion quickly nodded. “Of course!” He looked at her sideways before adding “I normally wait until the third date, but…”

Lysandra took a beat to process what he said, and apparently that beat was long enough for Aedion to contemplate his entire existence and worry that it was too soon to make that joke, he’s ruined everything and now she would leave.

Then Lysandra began to laugh hysterically, her tears from earlier being replaced with tears of laughter and she rested her head on Aedion’s shoulder as she slowly calmed down.

Looking down at her, he felt a pang in his heart that he didn’t want to think about right now. She was so beautiful, her eyes starry and shining from the tears, her hair a mess and her nose bright pink.

When he opened his mouth, he nearly told her what he was feeling. He nearly exclaimed, “I love you.”

What he said instead was

“Kiss me if I’m wrong, but I’m the best cheer-er upper on this earth.”

Lysandra sat up, smirked and pressed a kiss to his lips that left him dazed for the rest of the night.

There were many other kisses after that.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t edited this so please let me know if you find a mistake and I will fix it, but other than that please share it and show me the love! I spent an inexcusable amount of time looking up bad pickup lines for this.


End file.
